I have read with growing alarm about the objections to the choice of Marie Westburg as the new head of the Northampton Senior Center.
Choosing a director is a difficult job and often involves distinguishing between more than one highly qualified candidate. It’s hard to imagine that the people writing those letters have enough information about Westburg to know whether she is less qualified than Heather Cahillane.
My husband and I live in Williamsburg, and his father, age 92, is now living with us, so I have been regularly interacting with Westburg in her position as director of the Williamsburg Senior Center. She has been an extraordinary head of our Council on Aging.
She has done an astonishing job expanding activities offered at the center including dance, yoga, weekly podiatry visits, weekly home-cooked healthy food options, computer literacy, a pen pal program between elders and students, and interesting field trips which she coordinates with other senior centers in the Hilltowns.
She and her assistant publish a monthly newsletter that goes out to the whole community and is a important vehicle for disseminating news about town happenings. Westburg has the same kind of warmth and personable energy as Linda Desmond, former Northampton Senior Center director, who would sit down with elders she had never met in the Bistro and say “tell me a story.”
Westburg is exceptionally dedicated and hardworking. If someone comes to her with an idea for improving life for seniors in town, she will do all she can to help get that idea implemented. She is a sincere listener, and a deeply kind person.
She has collaborated with other groups in town on many projects large and small that build community and help people of different ages and interests connect.
It is painful to lose Westburg, but Northampton stands to benefit enormously. My family and I regularly bring my father-in-law to the Northampton Senior Center. I look forward to Westburg’s talents being put to good use in her new job.
Penny Schultz
Haydenville